More Guns, Hardening Targets, Are Not the Answer.

While the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre and his parrot, Donald Trump, talk about arming teachers and “hardening targets,” just remember this:

With an active shooter in progress, armed Broward County Sheriff’s deputies took up defensive positions outside the school, refusing to go inside to confront the shooter. So much for the “it takes a good guy with a gun to stop the bad guy with the gun” argument.

So it just naturally follows, and makes perfect sense, that we should arm the teachers inside the schools. This is just another example of the NRA and the Second Amendment enthusiasts’ universal response seeking to throw more guns into the mix.

MSNBC did a piece this morning investigating the cost of arming and training 20% of our nation’s teachers suggesting a price tag of just over $1 billion. That’s just for a 3 day intensive weapons and emergency response training session for all teachers and outfitting them with a 9 mm clock Glock. Police officers are required to requalify with their weapons on an annual basis. SWAT officers are continuously trained on procedures, including weapons training.

Are we really suggesting that our teachers in our children’s classrooms should be required to qualify with their weapons every year? And let’s look at these scenarios.

Where is the teacher supposed to keep the weapon when he or she is at school? What if a student gets his or her hands on the weapon? Are we truly expecting her teachers to place themselves in situations where they may actually have to take the life of a student? What if responding officers encounter a teacher, a “good guy” with a gun in a school during a shooting? Does it stand to reason that the teacher might likely be shot?

This is just a horrible idea that has not been clearly thought through by rational people. Let’s face it, if a military officer with specialized weapons training, while on a military base can use his assault weapon to kill 13 other soldiers, all of whom had specialized weapons training, how is the teacher supposed to protect the school? They can’t.